RAID, which is short for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a software or hardware storage virtualization technology which allows a system to use several hard drives as one single logical unit. In other words, all drives are used as one and the data on all of them is identical. This kind of a setup has 2 huge advantages over using a single drive to keep data - the first is redundancy, so in case one drive fails, the data will be accessible through the others, and the second is better performance as the input/output, or reading/writing operations will be distributed among a number of drives. You can find different RAID types based on how many drives are used, whether reading and writing are both done from all of the drives at the same time, whether data is written in blocks on one drive after another or is mirrored between drives in the same time, and many others. Based on the exact setup, the fault tolerance and the performance may vary.

RAID in Hosting

All the content which you upload to your new hosting account will be stored on fast NVMe drives that function in RAID-Z. This configuration is built to employ the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud web hosting platform and it adds an additional level of protection for your site content on top of the real-time checksum verification that ZFS uses to ensure the integrity of the data. With RAID-Z, the info is saved on a number of disks and at least one of them is a parity disk - whenever info is written on it, an additional bit is added, so in case any drive stops working for some reason, the stability of the data can be verified by recalculating its bits based on what is kept on the production drives and on the parity one. With RAID-Z, the functioning of our system will not be interrupted and it will continue operating smoothly until the faulty drive is changed and the data is synced on it.

RAID in Semi-dedicated Servers

The NVMe drives that are used for keeping any content uploaded to the semi-dedicated server accounts which we offer function in RAID-Z. This is a special configuration where one or more disk drives are used for parity i.e. the system will include an additional bit to any data cloned on this type of a drive. In case that a disk fails and is substituted with a new one, what info will be cloned on the latter will be a combination calculated between the data on the other disks and that on the parity one. This is done to guarantee that the info on the new drive shall be correct. Throughout the procedure, the RAID will continue operating adequately and the malfunctioning drive will not affect the adequate operation of your sites in any respect. Using NVMes in RAID-Z is a fantastic addition to the ZFS file system that runs on our cutting-edge cloud platform in terms of preserving the integrity of your files as ZFS uses specific digital identifiers referred to as checksums in order to prevent silent data corruption.

RAID in VPS Servers

The NVMe drives which we use on the machines where we set up VPS servers work in RAID to make sure that any content that you upload will be available and intact at all times. At least 1 drive is employed for parity - one bit of information is added to any data cloned on it. In the event that a main drive breaks down, it is changed and the data that will be duplicated on it is calculated between the other drives and the parity one. This is done to ensure that the needed information is copied and that no file is corrupted since the new drive will be incorporated into the RAID afterwards. In addition, we use hard drives working in RAID on the backup servers, so in the event that you add this upgrade to your VPS package, you will use an even more reliable hosting service as your content will be available on multiple drives regardless of any kind of unpredicted hardware malfunction.